Trisha Ping

FictionWomen's FictionDebut Fiction

Salvation in Savannah

Review by Trisha Ping

At the beginning of Beth Hoffman’s charming debut novel, young CeeCee Honeycutt has serious problems. Virtually abandoned by her salesman father, the young girl is left with her mentally ill mother, who lives mostly in her beauty pageant-winning past. Scorned by her classmates, who know about her awkward family situation, CeeCee finds solace in books and a kindly elderly neighbor, until her mother’s death changes everything.

Luckily, that’s when her whirlwind of a great-aunt swoops in. Eccentric, warm-hearted Tootie totes CeeCee to Savannah, Georgia, in her sleek automobile, and she is just the first of many remarkable women CeeCee will meet in her new hometown. Together they give the 12-year-old a taste of stability for the first time in her life, helping her to understand, and eventually forgive, her mother, her father and herself.

Saving CeeCee Honeycutt is a gem of a story, lovingly told. The 1960s Southern setting and coming-of-age angle may remind readers of favorites like The Secret Life of Bees—not surprising, since it was bought by the same editor—but the episodic narrative style and bookish heroine will also bring to mind classics like Anne of Green Gables. In fact, Saving CeeCee Honeycutt could easily be a crossover hit with teens. Readers who savor books with memorable characters and Southern settings will consider this a novel to treasure.

RELATED CONTENT:
Read an interview with Beth Hoffman.

At the beginning of Beth Hoffman’s charming debut novel, young CeeCee Honeycutt has serious problems. Virtually abandoned by her salesman father, the young girl is left with her mentally ill mother, who lives mostly in her beauty pageant-winning past. Scorned by her classmates, who know…

Biography

Life of the real Jo March

Review by Trisha Ping

There may be no American author more strongly identified with her creation than Louisa May Alcott is with Jo March. And with good reason: as Harriet Reisen explains in Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind ‘Little Women’—soon to be adapted for the PBS “American Masters” series—the real Louisa was just as intelligent, hot-tempered, rebellious and ambitious as her fictional counterpart. But the true story of Alcott’s life is both more tragic and more triumphant than anything she cooked up for her favorite little woman.

Born in 1832, Louisa grew up surrounded by American literary giants: Thoreau, Emerson and Hawthorne were personal family friends. Her father, Bronson Alcott, was an intelligent and gifted teacher with ahead-of-his time theories on everything from education to diets to bathing. He was also an idealist who didn’t believe in owning property and paid scant attention to financial matters. Always chasing the next dream (or escaping the last debt), Bronson moved the family four times before Louisa was two, a pattern that would be repeated throughout her life. Though famous friends often lent a hand, Louisa and her three sisters endured grinding poverty and deprivation, including a failed experiment in utopian living. This only fueled Louisa’s ambition: “I will do something, by and by,” she vowed at 16, “. . . anything to help the family; and I’ll be rich and famous before I die, see if I won’t!”

Reisen seamlessly weaves episodes from Alcott’s life with analyses of her fiction, nonfiction, essays and poetry, as well as revealing excerpts from letters and journals. Above all, she emphasizes Alcott’s enormous talent and prodigious output, some of which would only be uncovered years after her death. Since her more commercial work contained sensational lines like “heaven bless hashish,” Alcott felt it best to publish them under pseudonyms (her journals include several tantalizing references to stories as yet undiscovered). Never-before-published excerpts from a 1975 interview with Alcott’s niece, Lulu, lend insight into Alcott’s later years.

Meticulously researched and compelling, Reisen’s biography holds surprises for even the most devout Alcott fan. This empathetic portrait of the life of an American literary icon will be read for years to come. 

 

RELATED CONTENT

A preview of the PBS Masters program, airing December 28, 2009 

Louisa May Alcott, The Woman Behind Little Women from Nancy Porter Productions on Vimeo.

There may be no American author more strongly identified with her creation than Louisa May Alcott is with Jo March. And with good reason: as Harriet Reisen explains in Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind ‘Little Women’—soon to be adapted for the PBS “American Masters”…

Fiction

Byatt tells the story of an age

Review by Trisha Ping

The heft of A.S. Byatt’s latest work, The Children’s Book, promises a detailed, sprawling story. But the actual scope of this ambitious novel has to be experienced to be believed. The story of an age more than anything else, it encompasses 25 years (1895-1919) and has at least that many main characters, which leaves the reader wondering how they can all come to such vivid life in just 700 pages.

If such a wide-ranging saga can be said to have a center, this novel’s is Olive Wellwood, a complicated woman whose writing for children (she’s based in part on the writer E. Nesbit) financially supports the large family her sister, Violet, cares for while Olive writes and her husband works in Parliament. The Wellwoods are part of a circle of artistic friends, and the children are raised in a bohemian, permissive atmosphere that rivals Haight-Ashbury in the 1960s. 

Themes of creation and art—its power and what a person must sacrifice in its pursuit—are at the heart of The Children’s Book. Fairy-tale allusions abound, and some of the best passages are Olive’s writings, which have the almost subliminal creepiness found in the best fairy tales. Byatt displays her signature interest in secrets of all sorts, from those parents keep from children to those we hide from ourselves. Her characters juggle physical and intellectual desires, pursuits and goals—like Olive’s eldest daughter, Dorothy, whose desire to become a doctor is verbally but not always materially supported by her counter-cultural family; and Phillip, a runaway with the drive and genius to become a great potter, who is discovered living in the basement of the brand-new South Kensington (soon to be Victoria & Albert) Museum at the beginning of the book.

The Children’s Book has been touted as Byatt’s best work since Possession, the 1990 novel that brought the author a wider audience (she’s been publishing novels since 1964). The two novels do share many characteristics, but in many ways The Children’s Book, with its meticulous, complete rendering of a time and place, surpasses that earlier work. Masterful, complex and thought provoking, it will linger in the mind. 

The heft of A.S. Byatt’s latest work, The Children’s Book, promises a detailed, sprawling story. But the actual scope of this ambitious novel has to be experienced to be believed. The story of an age more than anything else, it encompasses 25 years (1895-1919) and…

Fiction

Daring fourth novel from an English literary star

Review by Trisha Ping

Some authors write the same book over and over again. Sarah Hall is not one of those writers. With novels focusing on the Cumbrian countryside (Haweswater), the American adventures of an English tattoo artist (The Electric Michaelangelo) and the dystopian future (Daughters of the North), Hall has proven that there's no topic she'll refuse to tackle.

Her fourth novel, which made the 2009 Man Booker Prize shortlist, is no exception. How to Paint a Dead Man may be Hall's most ambitious work yet. It features four main protagonists, jumps back and forth in time from post-war Italy to modern-day England, and deals with themes of art, loss and death. Hardly a cheery read, yet Hall's tight, stylish prose, marked by inventive turns of phrase, carries the reader through the story even when there's not much story to be had. The strongest thread (to this reader, at least) was the voice of Susan, which opens and closes the book. Her twin brother, Danny, has just died in a biking accident, and she's coping with the loss through an affair with her married coworker. Also compelling is the voice of Susan's father, Peter, a landscape artist who finds himself trapped in the wilderness he loves. His thoughts while waiting for rescue take the reader across America in the tumultuous 1960s art scene and behind the scenes of his passionate first marriage. The two other voices come from another country and an earlier time: An Italian artist with a tragic past whom Peter holds a one-way correspondence with, and Annette, a young girl who lives in the same Tuscan village and has been diagnosed with a degenerative sight disorder.

Though the stories at first seem disconnected, they gradually reveal hidden connections between the characters, and this unfolding keeps the reader engaged. Each narrator, in his or her own way, contemplates the power of art and the acceptance of mortality. Along with contemporaries like Scarlett Thomas and Lydia Millet, Hall is staking new ground for women in the "novel of ideas" category. Full of haunting images and thought-provoking ideas, How to Paint a Dead Man will linger in the mind.

 

Some authors write the same book over and over again. Sarah Hall is not one of those writers. With novels focusing on the Cumbrian countryside (Haweswater), the American adventures of an English tattoo artist (The Electric Michaelangelo) and the dystopian future (Daughters of the North),…

LiteratureArts & Culture

The Magician’s Book

Review by Trisha Ping

Romances with books can be just as rocky as the human variety. Critic Laura Miller, who writes about literature for publications like Salon and the New York Times, discovered that the hard way. She fell in love with C.S. Lewis’ Narnia as a child—and then felt betrayed and duped when, as a teen, she realized that the stories she adored could be read as Christian allegories. Still, when asked to write about a book that changed her life, she returned to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe—and, to her surprise, discovered that she could still get lost in Lewis’ world.

In The Magician’s Book: A Skeptic’s Adventures in Narnia, Miller delves into Lewis’ biography, the tradition of children’s literature, the power of myth and the history of fairy tales. She also talks to fellow Narnia fans, from personal friends to well-known writers like Neil Gaiman, Susanna Clarke and Jonathan Franzen. The thoughtful, incisive essays explore every aspect of these novels, which, in Miller’s words, “are far larger than they seem from the outside.”

“I can’t read the Chronicles the way I once did, with the same absolute belief,” writes Miller, yet in The Magician’s Book, she vividly portrays that feeling of enchantment. More than a literary critique or an exercise in nostalgia, these essays are a tribute to the power and depth of story and imagination, and to the pure joy of reading. Though the grown critic realizes how the magician does his tricks, something of the childhood magic remains.

Romances with books can be just as rocky as the human variety. Critic Laura Miller, who writes about literature for publications like Salon and the New York Times, discovered that the hard way. She fell in love with C.S. Lewis' Narnia as a child—and then…
NonfictionLiteratureArts & Culture

Looking for Anne of Green Gables

Review by Trisha Ping

One hundred years ago this month, L.M. Montgomery published Anne of Green Gables. The anniversary has been marked by a new edition of the book and a new prequel by Canadian children’s author Budge Wilson—not to mention the celebrations on Prince Edward Island. But how much did the feisty redhead have in common with her creator? That’s the question Irene Gammel poses in the well-researched Looking for Anne of Green Gables, which examines Montgomery’s life through the lens of her best-known work.

Gammel, who teaches English at Ryerson University in Toronto, digs up Montgomery’s influences, including model Evelyn Nesbit, whose dreamy beauty inspired Anne’s. She explores the ways Montgomery’s life mirrored Anne’s own, from her teaching career to the intense relationships with women that were the basis for Anne and Diana’s passionate friendship. The “dual biography” format can be awkward, and Gammel’s academic background is evident in some passages, but this work provides an in-depth look into two famous lives.

How much did feisty redhead Anne of Green Gables have in common with her creator?
Fiction

The Monsters of Templeton

Review by Trisha Ping

Lauren Groff's exuberant debut follows in the footsteps of notable first novels like Marisha Pessl's Special Topics in Calamity Physics and Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything Is Illuminated with its blend of illustrations, photographs and text. And like the main characters of Foer and Pessl, Groff's quirky protagonist, 28-year-old Willie Upton, is trying to solve a mystery about her past. Luckily, The Monsters of Templeton also marks the appearance of an original talent that can stand on its own in comparison to these literary heavyweights.

As the novel opens, Willie has returned to Templeton, New York, after a disastrous affair with her doctoral advisor at Stanford. Her disgrace is a disappointment to her mother, Vi, who had come back to town under similar conditions before Willie's birth. To jar Willie out of her depression, Vi shares a shocking revelation: Willie's birth was not the result of a one-night stand with a fellow hippie in a commune, as Willie had always supposed, but a one-night stand with a now-married Templeton resident. However, Vi refuses to tell Willie who her father is. Her only clue is that he, like Vi, was descended from the town's founder, Marmaduke Temple.

Far from being a dull geneaology search, Willie's quest for her biological father unearths such remarkable ancestors as Cinnamon and Charlotte, distant cousins whose ladylike correspondence leads to blackmail and betrayal; the "extraordinarily hirsute" Richard Temple; and a mute Indian girl, Noname. As she sorts through the past, Willie uncovers secrets galore but also learns to deal with her present-day problems.

Templeton is based on Groff's hometown of Cooperstown, which was founded by James Fenimore Cooper (who bears a passing resemblance to Marmaduke Temple). Groff's writing is ambitious, playful, intelligent and never dull; she adroitly hops backward and forward in time and assumes different narrative voices—including that of Templeton's famous lake monster, who knows all the town's secrets. Readers will emphathize with Willie as she discovers that while the past is important, the present is what you make it.

 

Lauren Groff's exuberant debut follows in the footsteps of notable first novels like Marisha Pessl's Special Topics in Calamity Physics and Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything Is Illuminated with its blend of illustrations, photographs and text. And like the main characters of Foer and Pessl, Groff's…

Fiction

Fire in the Blood

Review by Trisha Ping

When writing about Irène Némirovsky, it’s tempting to focus on the tragic circumstances of the last few years of her life. After a successful early career as a writer, during the German occupation of France she was unable to publish her work and forced to wear the yellow star; in 1942 she was arrested and sent to Auschwitz, where she died. Her young daughters survived, and kept her papers, leading to the discovery of the unfinished novel Suite Française and its eventual publication in the U.S. in 2006. Now, a second novel has been found among Némirovsky’s papers. The much shorter Fire in the Blood, which takes place in a small Burgundy village, doesn’t have the scope or dramatic backdrop of Suite Française, but that, perhaps, will keep reviewers’ focus where it belongs: on Némirovsky’s clean prose (translated again by Sandra Smith) and deep insight into the human psyche.

Fire in the Blood is told from the perspective of Silvio, a man of about 50 who has returned recently to his home village after years abroad. He is welcomed back by his cousin Hélène Erard, her husband François and their daughter Colette, who is soon to be married. But he maintains a certain detachment from the town and his friends and family, wandering among these sturdy, calm people like a breeze blowing through the trees, remaining an observer to their amusements and intrigues. “At my age, you feel a kind of coldness,” Silvio tells Colette, “of course, you can’t understand that, any more than I can understand your love affairs and foolish mistakes.” As the novel unfolds, the reader gradually realizes that Silvio is not quite as impassive as he seems, and that he is haunted by a passionate act in his past.

Némirovsky spent years in a small village much like this one, and her novel is full of sharp observations on such communities, especially their attitude toward outsiders and how they are willing to keep even the darkest secrets to protect one of their own. Fire in the Blood is a study of passion its power to bring happiness and destruction in equal measure, and the loss felt once it has dissipated.

Fire in the Blood is a study of passion its power to bring happiness and destruction in equal measure, and the loss felt once it has dissipated.
FictionWomen's Fiction

A lively take on the ultimate classic

Review by Trisha Ping

Books inspired by Jane Austen's novels are numerous—there are at least a dozen sequels to Pride and Prejudice alone, not to mention more loosely based adaptations like Bridget Jones' Diary—and an Austen biopic scheduled for release in August will doubtless spur even more homages to the beloved English writer. Should you be interested in this ever-growing genre, allow me to direct you to the best Austen tribute since Karen Joy Fowler's The Jane Austen Book Club: Shannon Hale's clever and imaginative Austenland.

New Yorker Jane Hayes is adamant that her obsession with a certain BBC adaptation of Jane Austen's most famous work has nothing to do with her inability to find lasting romance. And she's not at all embarrassed by the fact that after each  relationship ends, only multiple viewings of her trusty Pride and Prejudice DVDs will make things better. So unembarrassed, in fact, that she keeps them carefully cached in a neglected potted plant—until Great-Aunt Carolyn stumbles on them and calls Jane out on the dangers of letting dreams of Colin Firth's Mr. Darcy get in the way of true happiness. When Carolyn passes away six months later, she leaves a surprising legacy for her great-niece: an all-expenses-paid trip to Pembrook Park, an estate in Kent. There, Jane will spend three weeks living the Regency lifestyle, complete with corsets, empire-waist dresses, witty repartee and men in breeches.

Despite having resolved to embrace spinsterhood (and destroy her P&P DVD set) after her trip, Jane can't seem to avoid romance. A tall gardener and the inscrutable, slightly snobbish but nonetheless attractive Mr. Nobley show interest in her, but both are employees of Pembrook Park. Is either man revealing his true self?

Hale's charming first book for adults (she is also an award-winning young adult writer) is chick lit with soul. Though there's a laugh on nearly every page—Hale, like Austen, is adept at subtly skewering the ridiculous—there's also the more serious story of a woman learning the difference between fantasy and reality, and discovering that real life can be better than your dreams. Is there a better message for a summer read?

Trisha Ping received her first copy of Pride and Prejudice from her grandmother.

 

Books inspired by Jane Austen's novels are numerous—there are at least a dozen sequels to Pride and Prejudice alone, not to mention more loosely based adaptations like Bridget Jones' Diary—and an Austen biopic scheduled for release in August will doubtless spur even more homages…

FictionHistorical Fiction

Tough times in Texas

Review by Trisha Ping

She's shaken the boughs of her family tree (Cousins), won the Canadian Governor General Award for poetry (Celestial Navigation) and chronicled the brutality of the Civil War in the Missouri Ozarks (Enemy Women). Now Paulette Jiles turns her discerning eye and poet's ear for language to the rough-and-tumble early days of the West Texas oil fields, where Jeanine Stoddard grows up with her two sisters, Mayme and Bea, and her parents, Elizabeth and Jack.

Jeanine is a tomboy, and her reckless father's favorite, accompanying him to horse races and poker games. When he dies after an accident on the oil rig, the family returns to Elizabeth's birthplace, taking charge of the family farm just as the Depression hits. The four women struggle to make ends meet and keep the farm and the racehorse, Smokey Joe, that was Jack's only legacy. Each sister reacts to the crisis in a different way. Resourceful Jeanine pores over farming manuals from Texas A&M; Mayme takes a job in the oil field office; and preteen Bea loses herself in her writing. Meanwhile, Elizabeth puts her hopes (and the last of the family's savings) into speculating on an oil-drilling outfit that might never see a return. But the period touches, not the plot, lend this novel its charm. Jiles includes carefully chosen background details—Model Ts, saddle shoes, number three washtubs, Disney's Snow White, Movietone news shorts and the songs that play on the family's console radio—giving the reader a real sense of time and place that makes Stormy Weather seem more like a novel written in the 1930s than a historical novel about the 1930s.

Jiles chronicles the Stoddards' struggles in an understated prose style. Horrific events (drought, dust storms and hailstorms; Jeanine's near-strangling when her scarf is caught in farm machinery) are described vividly, but also with a sense of removal, echoing the characters' stoicism in the face of hardship: something expected, coped with and moved on from. Stormy Weather is a remarkable look into America's past, full of characters you will both admire and remember.

 

She's shaken the boughs of her family tree (Cousins), won the Canadian Governor General Award for poetry (Celestial Navigation) and chronicled the brutality of the Civil War in the Missouri Ozarks (Enemy Women). Now Paulette Jiles turns her discerning eye and poet's ear for…

Fiction

An innocent abroad

Review by Trisha Ping

First-time novelist Sheridan Hay gets off to a promising start with The Secret of Lost Things, a coming-of-age story set in a New York City bookshop that bears more than a passing resemblance to Strand Books (where native Australian Hay was once employed).

Rosemary Savage has led a sheltered life in a small Tasmanian town, but when her mother dies suddenly, the 18-year-old is left orphaned. With the encouragement of her mother's best friend, Rosemary leaves for New York with only $300 in her pocket, in search of a new beginning. She thinks she's found one after being hired at the Arcade, where she works with a number of colorful characters, including blind, albino assistant manager Walter Geist, dapper and attractive Oscar and transsexual cashier Pearl. The idealistic and lonely Rosemary soon befriends Pearl and fixates on the supremely uninterested Oscar as a romantic prospect, but even after becoming Walter's assistant, she still can't straighten out her feelings about him. But Walter is as attracted to Rosemary as she is to Oscar, and this odd triangle propels the mystery portion of the novel, which centers on a lost Herman Melville manuscript that Walter appears to have located. Seeking to win Oscar's favor, Rosemary tells him Walter's secret, and Oscar's quest to secure the manuscript culminates in a tragic night that affects all of the Arcade's employees.

Rosemary's journey from naivete to self-knowledge is realistically portrayed and compelling, as are Hay's loving depictions of 1980s-era New York City and the wonder of a young girl discovering it for the first time. However, The Secret of Lost Things never quite finds its way when it comes to the mystery plot—somehow the quieter chronicle of Rosemary's personal growth and rewarding relationships with Pearl and another mother-figure, a surly motel clerk, is far more gripping. Still, this is a solid first effort, and one that fans of thoughtful, book-centered novels won't want to miss.

 

First-time novelist Sheridan Hay gets off to a promising start with The Secret of Lost Things, a coming-of-age story set in a New York City bookshop that bears more than a passing resemblance to Strand Books (where native Australian Hay was once employed).

NonfictionHumor

Loves me, loves me more

Review by Trisha Ping

You're an intelligent, confident, successful, beautiful woman, and something about that silly little advice book that was so popular back in 2005 just doesn't ring true. Surely it's impossible for any guy not to be into someone as wonderful as you.

If that's the way you feel, He Just Thinks He's Not That Into You: The Insanely Determined Girl's Guide to Getting the Man She Wants by Danielle Whitman is the book for you. If a man moves without giving you his new contact information, it's not because he's not into you—he just wants you to chase him for a change. Why are there endless books about how a woman should play hard to get (ridiculous!), but the minute a man does it, it's considered evasive? Whitman asks indignantly, before advising the lovelorn advice seeker to chase after happiness and flush it out into the open. This is 100-plus pages of tongue-in-cheek fun that will make you laugh out loud.

You're an intelligent, confident, successful, beautiful woman, and something about that silly little advice book that was so popular back in 2005 just doesn't ring true. Surely it's impossible for any guy not to be into someone as wonderful as you.

…

FictionHistorical Fiction

American widow

Review by Trisha Ping

The much-maligned wife of president Abraham Lincoln tells her story in California writer Janis Cooke Newman's masterful Mary. Newman read only Mary Todd Lincoln's diaries and letters and other 19th-century documents while writing her book, resulting in a truly authentic tone and style. It is presented as a memoir written during Mary's time in Bellevue Place Sanatarium, a period sensationalized by the press, who delighted in speculating about the circumstance that led Mary's own son Robert to have her committed.

Newman covers Mary's entire life, from her comfortable but lonely childhood in Kentucky, through her courtship and marriage to Abraham Lincoln, to his assassination and beyond. Some of the most intriguing sections detail the relationship between Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln. Mary is depicted as playing an integral part in her husband's political success, teaching him to project his voice and giving him confidence. Though the two had a strong respect and love for one another, Lincoln's fear of insanity and his frequent fits of melancholy (which he felt could be triggered by strong emotion) forced him to keep his wife at arm's length.

Mary Todd Lincoln's emotional ups and downs and enormous spending sprees are well documented, but Newman presents them in a sympathetic light, portraying Mary as a deeply passionate, intelligent woman in a time when these qualities in women were discouraged and feared. Mary spends her life trying to find someone who will reciprocate her passion—or at least accept and appreciate it—and that she continues to fall short is perhaps the greatest tragedy in a life littered with tragic moments.

 

The much-maligned wife of president Abraham Lincoln tells her story in California writer Janis Cooke Newman's masterful Mary. Newman read only Mary Todd Lincoln's diaries and letters and other 19th-century documents while writing her book, resulting in a truly authentic tone and style. It is…

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